Note: If any of the government's loans, commitments or investments actually get paid back or pay off, then that amount would be reduced. However, some analysts have said that the government will end up committing closer to $20 trillion, rather than $12.8 trillion.

Late to the party. I was blogging on this article last month. Of course, this blog is a great source of information.

These days it's especially important to disseminate correct information. The public is being deluded by the mass media into believing 1) that the bailout was necessary and 2) that the$700 billion was the extent of the total commitment by the government--us. The $12 trillion plus figure is vital because it reflects the back door through which derivatives of unknown value were exchanged for AAA-rated government bonds--ours.

The accurate cost per capita, $42,000 is vitally important as people need to learn it's our debt, we the people have to pay the lending back. And we the people will have to pay the interest on all those trillions to--you guessed it--the banks, who end up owning all that debt, acquired Treasuries from off-loading derivative trash via the Fed's various discount windows.

The Fed gotcha is that it's an organization controlled by and run for the benefit of the banks. In turn, political donations get politicians elected, leading to the recent comment by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) that "banks own Congress."

So what exactly happens when the Chinese aren't able to collect on any of the treasuries that that are hanging over the balance sheet of their central bank? Will all our phones begin to ring off the hook with a Chinese debt collector on the other end? The gov't sure as hell isn't going to be able to tax us more because the vast majority of us are already broke.

"If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; And the sixteen being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; But be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers; And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering...and the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." -- Thomas Jefferson

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